


Love Is Its Own Protection

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arguing, Car Accidents, Delusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Injury Recovery, Jay Gatsby Lives, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Queer Character, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:27:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23136163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: “Nothing?” I asked. “You’ve found nothing you love that isn’t for or because of her?”Gatsby hesitated. His lips parted. “I can only imagine why you care so much.”I considered confession, but a sin of omission was no worse than a sin of admission, so I said nothing. He hadn’t accused me.“Why do you think?” I asked, instead. I hadn’t meant to say it, but the words fell from my drink-slack lips.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Nick Carraway/Jay Gatsby
Comments: 9
Kudos: 189





	Love Is Its Own Protection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [irisbleufic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/gifts).



Ultimately, I was helpless. 

The heat and whiskey and the shock had paralyzed me, forcing me further than where the sheer terror of emotion could reach me.

My vision was at an increasingly dizzying tilt, but I would have needed to be blind to miss the violence-ready tension in Tom’s shoulders, or Daisy’s hands trembling on her cigarette.

I stood at Gatsby’s elbow, balanced on the imperceptible line between necessary and forgotten. Him, I could see in perfect clarity. Gatsby’s eyes were incandescent with unshed tears, and his hands shook in fists at his sides.

“Jay,” I said, in desperation. “Tom. _Daisy._ ”

None of them responded, too caught up in the agony vibrating between them, taut as violin strings, every word that had come before a violent bow-stroke sending the whole precarious situation ashudder.

“Jordan,” I tried, feeling somehow certain that if I didn’t interfere, something terrible would happen. It was all being torn apart already; I was certain that Jay, at least, wouldn’t survive another tragedy. “Help me.”

She, at least, had sense. I could have loved her for it, if it wasn’t all too wretched to bear. If I had room in my throat for a fuller heart.

Jordan looked between Tom and Gatsby, still caught in the glory of their rage and loss. Slowly, moving as though any of the heat-tensed animals in the room might startle at it, took Daisy by the arms.

Tom made a sound. It wasn’t quite a word, was closer in its shape to Daisy’s name, but he choked it off. 

Gatsby was still wordless, but not for lack of trying. His lips parted, tongue flashing out to wet them against the oppressive air, but whatever he meant to say caught before it emerged. 

“Let’s go for a walk,” Jordan insisted, in her most compelling tone of voice, marching Daisy towards the door. “Let the men have their quarrels.”

Daisy let herself be pulled across the room, nearly to where Gatsby and Tom were repelling even the glances in their direction.

Jordan looked at Daisy, Daisy stared at her hands, and I looked at Gatsby, but only the edges of him—the loose lock of blond hair across his forehead, the tears standing in his eyes like nervous cadets, prepared to march but unsure what would happen if they did.

As Jordan and her weightless cargo of a woman passed by the two of them, Tom moved.

I never knew what his intention was. Perhaps he meant only to touch Daisy’s arm. Maybe he was intending to grab her, or hit her as he’d hit Myrtle.

It didn’t matter, because between one blink and the next, Gatsby’s hands were around Tom’s throat, and they were howling, snapping and snarling like animals.

Daisy ran. 

Jordan lurched to keep ahold of her, knowing as well as I did that she was the grenade-pin, but Daisy wrenched free and was gone.

My vision went the last few degrees askew, and then Jordan’s face was above me, twisted in concern.

Miracle of miracles, it was Gatsby who appeared next, crouching down to lever me back upright.

“Was it the heat, old sport?” he asked, one hand on the back of my neck, the other wrapped in my shirtfront. His fingers were hot as gunmetal, but I appreciated his touch nonetheless.

“The whiskey, I think,” I replied, desperately wanting him to keep holding me. My head was spinning. “And the shouting.”

Gatsby looked abashed. He let go of my shirtfront, smoothed out the wrinkles, and flattened his brand-hot palm on my chest. “I’m sorry old sport—Nick. I’ve quite neglected you, haven’t I?”

I was surprised to hear him acknowledge it. Perhaps, now that Daisy and her blinding, gravitational beauty were gone, he could see me again.

Tom said something unrepeatable, irreparable. Gatsby twitched, his already flushed cheeks going scarlet with anger.

“Let it be,” I urged, sitting up so quickly my head spun again. Gatsby was blocked out by darkness in my vision for a moment, but his hands stayed on me, hot and trembling.

“Nick—” Gatsby stammered, and I realized that it was _me_ he was defending.

“Leave it,” I insisted. “Let’s just go, Jay.”

Clearly, Gatsby hadn’t considered retreating. A soldier at heart, still. “But… Daisy…”

I nearly left without him, but I would have no way home. I couldn’t drive, and couldn’t walk all the way to the train. “Trust me,” I pleaded. “You aren’t going to win. Not this time.”

Gatsby looked agonized. I grasped him by the elbows, managing to get both of us to our feet. I dared not look at Tom.

I managed to get Gatsby out of the hotel, and into the street, before we were both shaking too hard to walk. We stopped beside his car, clinging to one another. 

Gatsby’s breath came in heaves, like he might cry or be sick, but he did neither, only shuddered in my arms, face a blotchy red and his eyes so wet they shone.

“She won’t—” he swallowed, and made an ugly sound, like the beginning of a sob. “Daisy, I’ve… lost her, haven’t I?”

I wanted desperately to comfort him. I had been able to in my house, when he and Daisy reunited, but I hadn’t needed to lie, then.

“I think you have,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Gatsby stilled. He was still for a long time, aside from the quivering bow of his lips. I was paralyzed, once again, this time by the urge to kiss him, to calm that trembling with tenderness.

I was still staring at him, lost on what to do, when a tear dropped down his cheek. I caught it with my thumb on sheer instinct, smearing the wetness sideways.

“Nick,” Gatsby breathed, nearly whimpering, “I don’t know what to do. I’ll be nothing if she leaves.”

“There must be more to you than _her_ , Jay,” I snapped. He infuriated me, in the way only a drunk man can be infuriated. All of Gatsby’s majesty, all his indulgence—all he’d done with the rare opportunity to change himself—and it all meant nothing to him, because of _her._

Gatsby just stared at me. I grasped him by the shoulders and shook him, aware that I was unbalancing us both. Gatsby flinched, grabbing at my elbows, and we toppled against the car.

“Nothing?” I asked. “You’ve found nothing you love that isn’t for or because of her?”

Gatsby hesitated. His lips parted. “I can only imagine why you care so much.”

I considered confession, but a sin of omission was no worse than a sin of admission, so I said nothing. He hadn’t accused me.

“Why do you think?” I asked, instead. I hadn’t meant to say it, but the words fell from my drink-slack lips.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Gatsby insisted, fingers tightening on my sleeves. “I never cared what anyone thought of me but her.”

Absent anything but desperation, I pushed him into the car. We sat there for a while, Gatsby trembling fit to shatter and me still clinging to his sleeves.

“What do I _do_?” Gatsby nearly whined.

“You pull yourself together!” I declared, which I now realize must have seemed preposterous coming from me, in my drunkenness. “Find yourself something, _anything_ , not tainted by her.”

That was when Jay kissed me, in full view of the street, his hands fisted in my lapels. I allowed it for a moment, before slinging my weight forward, knocking us horizontal in the seat of Gatsby’s car. 

We laid there, clutching each other, startled as children caught out in the midst of a game.

“This mustn’t be because of her,” I said, fiercer than I intended, and softer too. “Do you understand, Jay? This mustn’t be because I’m her cousin.”

“I could have just as easily made contact with her through Miss Baker,” Jay replied, his head listing forward until he had hidden his face in my neck. “You, I… I took personal interest in.”

“You had better,” I replied, trying not to be furious at him. “Otherwise all I’ve done this summer will have been a colossal waste of heartbreak.”

Jay sat up so quickly he nearly knocked me off his lap. “I’m sorry,” he said, taking my face in his hands. 

I was utterly dumbfounded by his expression. It seemed to have just occurred to him that he was hurting me. I had barely parted my lips to speak when he was kissing me again.

Something slammed. Someone shouted. I threw Jay and myself to the floor of the car, cowering from artillery that never fell.

Jay scrambled upright, his body a single line of tension, his face gone white, save for the high points of color on his cheeks, and his illustriously bright eyes.

“Jesus,” I groaned, getting to my knees, blinking away flashbulbs of barbed wire.

The car shuddered and stalled as Jay tried to throw it into gear. Tom was still hurling insults like gunshots when Jay roared away down the road.

Sitting up, I seized Jay by the wrist, gasped his name, and began, with a shudder, to laugh.

“Well, that fixes it,” I gasped, watching Jay’s fingers tighten by degrees on the steering wheel, until he was white-knuckled. “He’ll never let you see her again.”

Jay trembled beside me, but his face, as red as it was, was dry aside from the sweat. I could see the salt-tracks of the tears already fallen, but whatever emotion he was seized by, it had flung him beyond tears.

 _I_ could have cried, from the sheer stress of it. To distract myself, I began to plan what I would do if Jay proved unswayed from his course set for the past. I made it as far as a selling price for my house and the subtraction of a train ticket from that sum, and the time it would take me to pack.

My imagination betrayed me the moment I imagined stepping out of my house, bags in hand, hatboxes stacked high. My theoretical gaze drifted to the upper window of Jay’s house, from which he’d so often waved, and I was shaken back to reality, no closer to composure than I’d been before.

Reality, it turned out, was speeding fifty miles an hour out of New York, swerving between the two lanes indiscriminately, as Jay, now ashen, did the only clever thing he’d ever done in my company, and retreated. 

“Slow down, Jay, by God,” I said, a mile later, when we hit a pothole hard enough that the car’s whole swollen frame shook. 

To my surprise, he did. We slowed to forty, and by the time we reached the ashheaps, to just under thirty-five.

I marveled, later, how much worse it could have been, if I had been more afraid to breach the car’s agonized silence. I have never been religious, beyond the usual education, but I’ll confess I thanked God for hours afterward.

Myrtle ran into the street, just as we were passing George Wilson’s garage. We could have easily swerved to avoid her, had another car not come the opposite direction, slower than Jay’s usual pace but faster than we were going at the time.

Jay must have hit the brake, because we slowed, but it wasn’t enough.

In desperate terror, despite my awful lack of ability with a car, I grabbed the steering wheel, wrenching away from the oncoming, pointing the nose past Myrtle, at the front of the garage. Jay cried out, wrenched it from my hand, and overcorrected.

We hit the oncoming car at an angle. Glass shattered. There was a great screech of metal on metal, a higher scream of human terror, and then terrible, terrible silence.

*

I opened my eyes. I hadn’t realized they were closed. Nothing seemed to have moved. Jay and I sat stunned, clinging to each other.

Myrtle was shrieking at pain’s highest pitch. Later, I learned that she had nearly lost an eye to the shrapnel, and rolled her ankle nearly to snapping, but she was alive.

So were Jay and I, and the other driver, by some miracle. 

We had all stumbled from our cars, shocked to wordlessness and nearly laughing, when Wilson himself came howling out of the door, grabbing at Myrtle and shrieking. 

It was the New York-bound driver whose name I never learned who called the ambulance. I remember very little of what came after, but Jay informed me that they had to pry the two of us apart, and that it took longer than getting Wilson away from Myrtle.

A splinter of glass had gone through Jay’s chest, stopping just shy of his heart. The impact against the steering wheel had snapped the right side of his collarbone, and his wrist was sprained from his grip on the stick.

I had fared better, with Jay’s body shielding me from the crash. My cheek was bloody where glass had lanced it open right at the arch of the bone, and I found bruises everywhere, but I was relatively unharmed.

No one visited us in hospital, aside from each other. None of the party guests, not Tom and Daisy. Not even Jordan.

After the third time I dragged myself down the hallway to Jay’s room and curled up on the bed beside him, the nurses dragged a second cot into the room and let me sleep there.

Lacking visitors, we heard the news, through rumor and snippets of conversation, along with the newspapers that reached us days after their publishing.

The Buchanans had left for Europe, without any announcement on when they’d be back. The Wilsons had gone west, despite Myrtle’s injuries, and her shock-induced muteness.

Jay slept, as he recovered from blood loss, terror, and grief. I read, and once I had exhausted the miserable array of literature on the table between our cots—newspapers from the week before, tabloid magazines from months ago, and cheap, barely decent paper novels that I nonetheless devoured—I wrote. 

My writings, mostly scribbled in the margins of the newspapers, were commentary at first, on the various speculative articles about the crash, about Gatsby, about the Buchanans. I went unnamed, like the other driver. Myrtle Wilson was mentioned, but only in passing, as the object of _someone’s_ affair—Gatsby’s, usually. 

Tom and Daisy’s names cropped up once, twice, a third—and then they were gone. Bribed themselves out of the public eye, I was sure.

Their carelessness made me angry, but only faintly, as though the anger had brushed against me in the street. It was a tired anger, simmering low and sad.

I was more hurt than angry, as it went. They had gone without a word—an irrefutable sign that any care they had for Jay and I was circumstantial.

Tom had been my friend, Daisy my family. Jordan my girl, for a while. And yet, they had all gone, as quick as they could.

I could not muster more anger, as much as I tried. It was as though my memories of them were dead in the waters of my mind, shells of their images abandoned, as I could no longer reconcile my imagined friends with my lived experiences.

I told Jay this, after I’d written it down, and it seemed the first thing to pierce his veil of exhausted grief. He nodded, rolling onto his side to look at me.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked, and I was nodding before he finished.

I took him by the hand, joining him on the one bed so I could kiss him, for the first time since the crash. “Yes. For as long as you’ll have me.”

Jay buried his face in my neck, and I was certain, with a sharpness like the first autumn wind after summer fades, that things would be all right.


End file.
